


As Free As A Chained Bird

by Pastelbandana



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ultimate Hunt, Angst, I'm so sorry, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, some strong language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14162121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pastelbandana/pseuds/Pastelbandana
Summary: Being born as an Ultimate, especially after the Tragedy, was like being a convict on death row—you knew your death was going to happen one day in the future, there was simply no avoiding it.-Two kids hated by the world decide to try to live for once.





	1. Shackled by the Mortal World

Being born as an Ultimate, especially after the Tragedy, was like being a convict on death row _—_ you knew your death was going to happen one day in the future, there was simply no avoiding it. Shuuichi knew it could happen at anytime, anywhere, by anyone. He’d seen Ultimates get taken away to die as young as their teens all the way up to their mid-twenties and yet still higher. There was no rhyme or reason to when an Ultimate was destined to die, it just happened when it did.

Being an Ultimate was, needless to say, terrifying. Shuuichi went to bed each night knowing that it could be his last, knowing that tomorrow he could be taken. He spent many a sleepless nights staring up at the ceiling, wondering if tomorrow would be his last day.

Ultimates being found were far and few between. For the most part, there weren’t a lot of Ultimates left in the world now that they had been hunted down to near extinction. But with that long drought of Ultimate killings also came the horrible treatment that occured when they found one. Humans were greedy to finish off the last of the Ultimates, greedy to finally finish taking their revenge on them for a stupid event that happened before Shuuichi was even alive.

If Shuuichi had to change one thing in his life, it would be to change being born as an Ultimate. He wasn’t even that good at his talent—a lot of Ultimates weren’t these days if they knew what was good for them. The minute you peeked your head out of your little turtle shell of safety and gave into the horrible craving of using your talent, your head would be taken clean off.  

That was just the way that things worked around here, so it was the way that Shuuichi accepted it.  

* * *

“Good morning, Uncle,” Shuuichi said through a yawn as he walked into the kitchen. His uncle was already at the table, sitting down and enjoying a cup of coffee with his eggs and toast as he read the paper. His suitcase sat next to his feet underneath the table.

“Mornin,’” his uncle grunted not looking up from the paper he was reading. On the cover, Shuuichi could see the headline on the front page in big, bold black letters claiming, “ **Couple Murdered. Suspect not Found.”** With a small headline under it saying, **“See inside for more details.”**

Shuuichi instantly understood why his uncle was so wrapped up in the paper. He went over to the stove and made himself a plate of scrambled eggs from what his uncle left on the griddle. They weren’t terribly cold, but Shuuichi threw them in the microwave anyway. While his eggs were warming up in the microwave, Shuuichi, looking over his uncle’s shoulder, studied what his uncle was reading.

His uncle, unfortunately, caught him staring. “Want a crack at the mystery?” He smiled slyly as he waved the paper in Shuuichi’s direction.

Shuuichi quickly grew flustered and yelped when the microwave went off from behind him, saving him from answering. His uncle just laughed at him as he scrambled to place the plate on the table before pouring himself a glass of milk.

“Oh, um, the police will solve it, I’m sure, or you, uncle,” Shuuichi said as he stabbed the eggs onto his fork. “I don’t know anything about murder cases.”

His uncle stared blankly at him over the top of the newspaper. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

Shuuichi quickly shoved the eggs into his mouth and stared down at his milk as it swished back and forth in the glass.

His uncle sighed. “You moved in with me so that you could work on your talent without raising any suspicion, but now you won’t even try?”

“That’s not true, Uncle. I do...things. Oh! Like, remember last week when I found that missing pet for that one lady?” Shuuichi smiled up at his uncle.

“That hardly counts as using your talent to its full extent, Shuuichi,” his uncle grumbled, shaking his head as he went back to reading his paper.

The rest of breakfast was tense as they ate in silence.

* * *

“Here,” his uncle said as he threw a load of papers onto his desk. Shuuichi yelped as he wasn’t expecting it.

“Um, what exactly do you want me to do with these, Uncle?” Shuuichi said, looking at the stack of papers with awe.

“Solve the case. I’m too busy with other one’s I have. Plus, it will be a good chance for you to work on your own talent with an actual case for once.”

His uncle walked out of the room, not waiting for Shuuichi to respond to him, knowing it would be some form of denial and protest.  

Shuuichi looked at the papers in front of him and bit his lip. He could do this, he could. Just a simple case, solve it to please his uncle, and move on with his life. That was all there was to it, so Shuuichi got to work on solving the case.

Deep within him, buried under layers of suppression, his heart was crying as if it had found water after being stranded in a dessert for weeks.

* * *

Shuuichi stood by the printer, waiting for the papers to finish printing. He only had to wait a few more seconds before the printer stopped, letting out a little beep to show it was finished. He grabbed the papers, checking them over briefly to make sure none were missing, and went to his uncle’s study, knocking timidly on the door.

“Come in!” His uncle responded and Shuuichi walked through the door.

His uncle whistled as he saw the amount of papers that Shuuichi was holding. “You really went all out on that report, didn’t you?” He smiled as he took the papers from Shuuichi’s waiting hands.

His uncle pointed to the name of the man that Shuuichi had written to be the murderer. “So the culprit was this one, huh?”

“Ah, well, I’m not sure. You should look it over-”

“I’ll let the police station know right away. Good work as usual, Shuuichi.”

Shuuichi bit his lip and let his hat cover his eyes, avoiding his uncle’s gaze. He excused himself from the man’s study and went back up to his room only to stare at the wall for the remainder of the hour.

* * *

When Shuuichi looked at the newspaper a few days later, he found that the man he believed was the murderer ended up admitting to his crimes to the police. His uncle smiled to him as he stared at the title, “ **Man Confesses to Horrible Murders** ,” patting Shuuichi a bit on the back before his uncle went to solve more cases. When he skimmed through the article, he found that it only mentioned his uncle’s name, and there was no indication anywhere that Shuuichi had his hands in any part of the case. _Good,_ he thought, _that’s the way things should always be._ He wanted to be a shadow forever if that meant his secret was kept safe.

* * *

“Come on, Shuuichi, just man up and come with me,” his uncle growled, desperately trying to get Shuuichi to do some field work with him.

“Uncle you know what will happen if anyone suspects anything. Besides, I’d only hold the investigation back.”

“Fine, you don’t have to come today, but we’re going to have a talk about this later.” That wasn’t too unexpected. Shuuichi’s uncle always had those kinds of talks with him about how he should be “using his talent more,” “not being so afraid,” or, “not being a burden.” They always ended the same way, and they never changed the way Shuuichi acted. If the world wanted Shuuichi to know he wasn’t a burden to it, it sure did a horrible job showing it.

Shuuichi nodded, but his uncle was already gone out the door and didn’t see him. Shuuichi sighed and went back to doing his homework for school the next day.

* * *

School wasn’t too hard for Shuuichi. For the most part he just drifted through the day, sighing when the clock looked as if it had barely moved an inch.

Right now, he was in physics, and he wanted to just get out of this class and go to his lunch. He felt a ball of paper hit him for the thousandth time that day and sighed. As if it wasn’t bad enough, he also had to put up with his friend’s irritating antics.

At school, he didn’t have too many friends. He tried to limit the interactions he had with others, while having just enough to not seem suspicious. Among those friends, the one who was currently throwing paper at him, was one Kokichi Ouma. Shuuichi was 99% positive he was an Ultimate too, but he didn’t bring it up with the other boy. It was never appropriate to accuse somebody of being an Ultimate without real proof. But Kokichi was pushy and clingy and did such meticulous and extreme things that Shuuichi couldn’t see him as anything _other_ than an Ultimate, he just didn’t know what kind.

Giving in to his friend’s persistence, he picked up one of the crumpled balls at his feet while the teacher wasn’t looking and unraveled it. Oh yeah, and he was also a pretty big liar. Shuuichi threw a look back towards the boy who smirked at him, leaned his face against his hand, and winked seductively at Shuuichi.

Shuuichi blushed and looked back to the wrinkled paper in front of him. It was hard to write on such textured paper, but he managed to write out his response of, “we’re not boyfriends, Kokichi.” before crinkling it back up and pegging the boy with it when the teacher had his back turned again.

Kokichi’s yelp as he was hit with the sharp edges attracted the teacher’s attention as other students laughed out. The teacher just glared at Kokichi, and the giggling increased when half the class pointed at Kokichi and the other half at Shuuichi. Now, as long as he didn’t see all the paper’s at his fe-

“Office. Now. Both of you.”

Great, just how he wanted his day to go. As he and Kokichi walked side by side down to the office, Kokichi didn’t once wipe that shit-eating grin off of his face.

* * *

At the office, they were given the obligatory but unnecessary lecture by the principal on how to behave oneself in class. Kokichi, the one who needed it, didn’t even listen to it, and Shuuichi spent the entire lecture hiding his eyes behind his hat as he took interest in literally anything else in the room. When the bell rang about 30 minutes later, they were both finally allowed to head down to lunch.

“Ugh, it’s so stupid that they got so angry over us just passing notes,” Kokichi pouted as they sat down at their table and ate their lunch.

Shuuichi, despite his frustration with Kokichi getting him in trouble in the first place, couldn’t help but agree. “Yeah, there wasn’t even a need to send us down to the office in the first place. Although, I do suppose he’s tired of telling you off himself at this point, isn’t he,” Shuuichi said with a small grin as he essentially talked down into his food.

“Didn’t he have, like, anything better to do though?” Kokichi said, ignoring his comment about how often he got scolded by the principal. “What do you think our teacher even does with the notes he finds on the ground anyway?”

Shuuichi froze as he thought about it. “L-Let’s just hope he just throws them out.” Oh God, he didn’t want to see his teacher’s face when he read all of Kokichi’s messages calling Shuuichi his boyfriend. He didn’t even read any of the other papers, who knew what those ones said.

“Say, Kokichi, what did those other letters say anyways?” Just to ease his anxiety a bit, he had to know.

“Oh, it’s quite simple,Shuuichi. They all said how much I want to fuck you and how I think you’re so pretty and I’m honestly pretty mad that you decided to read the most vanilla one I sent.”

Shuuichi decided he probably shouldn’t have asked, because if anything, even if it was probably just a lie, it had just made his anxiety over the situation worse. Why was he friends with Kokichi again?

* * *

The rest of his school was uneventful and he was thankful when the final bell rang and he was allowed to go home for the day. Being home found him in a new line of trouble though as his uncle again tried to convince him to go out with him to do some field investigation.

“Weren’t you doing field work yesterday, too?” Shuuichi complained as he pulled his notebook and homework out of his bag.

“This case is huge, Shuuichi,” his uncle said, rubbing his forehead in frustration. “Nobody can manage to figure it out at all. It’s looking more and more like this is going to be an unsolvable crime. Poor woman, too, never knowing why, or by whom, her son died.”

Shuuichi paused and sighed. “When do we have to be there by?”

His uncle smiled at him. “Here, I’ll make you a quick dinner while you read over the case.”

Shuuichi grabbed the paper and began reading the case overview and what they had already discovered. As much as he worried about being unmasked, he also hated when people didn’t get closure on things like this. Cases that he could at least _try_ his hand at solving. He just wished he didn’t have to risk being killed every time he tried to help another person. Was being selfish about his own life such a bad thing?  

* * *

The crime scene was a 30 minute car ride and, when they got out of the car, his uncle flashed a badge at the officers keeping watch. They begrudgingly let both of them through. There were some other officers inside the house, examining the crime scene for clues, being careful not to touch or alter the evidence they were trying to preserve.

His uncle nodded at a few offices when they glanced his way and he went back to leading Shuuichi deeper inside the building. They reached a room that was heavily guarded with cops. The door was open and Shuuichi could just barely make out that there was a body laying in the middle of the floor. Flashing his badge again, they let both of them through the door and Shuuichi looked down at the body. He was young, and Shuuichi took in every detail about the body, while his uncle pretended to point out things to him about the body so he wouldn’t seem so suspicious.

It was a well known fact among many of the officers here that Shuuichi was a “detective-in-training” and was one day expected to take over the detective family business. So it wasn’t too far of a stretch that Shuuichi would occasionally come to join his uncle on field work. What _was_ a stretch was how every case that Shuuichi stuck his nose into got solved fairly quickly afterwards. He’d gotten his fair share of suspicious looks from his classmates before, but that was nothing compared to the suspicious looks he got from some of the smarter cops.

Shuuichi nodded at his uncle’s voice, pretending to listen as he stared down at the body. He looked at the body for another minute or so before his uncle managed to sense that he was done in this room and brought him to the other part of the house, thanking the offices as he passed them.

“Well, what do you think so far?” His uncle whispered to him as they walked back into the front room.

Shuuichi just hummed as he held his hand up to his mouth in thought. The room his uncle brought him into contained crucial pieces of evidence as it seemed to be where the main conflict took place. He looked around the room, seeing all the toppled furniture and indents on the wall; probably from when somebody was slammed against them, if he had to take his best guess.

Suddenly, something caught his eye and he approached it, his uncle following in tow. He frowned as he approached it, seeing that it was just a few locks of hair. However… something about it wouldn’t stop bothering him.

“Can they run this hair?” He asked his uncle quietly, and his uncle looked down at the hair with a questioning look.

“Sure, but wouldn’t you say it’s just the victim’s hair? It’s the same length, color, and everything, and we found it close to where the victim lost more hair.”

Shuuichi furrowed his eyebrows at his uncle’s explanation. Yes, it _looked_ as if it was the victim’s hair, but the choppiness of it suggested other things to Shuuichi. His uncle, nonetheless, called one of the cops over to collect the evidence and they went back to looking around the area. Shuuichi was already forming his own conclusions in his head, and he hated every thought of it. Still, he swallowed the ball of tension in his throat and got back to work.

By the time they left, Shuuichi was sure he gave the police enough evidence to solve the case, and he hated himself for it, hated what he had just done.

“Do you know what happened?” His uncle asked while they drove back to their house.

Shuuichi didn’t bother to face his uncle, instead keeping himself facing the window. He swallowed the lump in his throat and wiped away the tears forming in his eyes. “Yeah…” he managed to wobble out.

His uncle didn’t even take his eyes off the road to glance at him again, seeing Shuuichi in the state he was in as well as how he sounded was enough to tell him he shouldn’t ask more. He would just have to wait for the police report.

* * *

A few days later, while Shuuichi was sitting in his room doing his homework, he heard a timid knock on the door.

“Come in,” he said, but unlike his uncle, he always made sure to look at who was coming into his room. Sure, his life was already dangerous in the profession he was in, but being an Ultimate meant you had to be aware of everything with a heightened caution on top of one’s normal cautionary impulses.

He had nothing to fear though, as it turns out it was just his uncle, but his trained habit of making sure would always die hard with him.

“So I just got the police report. Do you want to hear it?”

Shuuichi almost wanted to vomit, but his voice betrayed him. “Sure.” He prayed to whatever God was out there he was wrong.

“The police got a confession out of the victim’s mother. Apparently she did it in self-defense, but upon realizing that she had killed her son, she panicked and lied to the police about what happened, thinking they wouldn’t catch her.”

Shuuichi felt tears welling back up in his eyes before his uncle even managed to finish the article. All he had needed to hear was that the mother was the perpetrator, like he had suspected, before his brain blocked everything else out and his ears only heard white noise.

“I see. Thank you, uncle.” He didn’t care if he just cut his uncle off from saying something, he honestly didn’t.

He turned back around and looked at the open textbook in front of him, his vision turning red the longer he stared at it. Without knowing what overcame him, he picked up the textbook and flung it at the wall, not caring if it dented the wall or ruined the textbook in someway. What was the point in studying something from the world that he hated? From the world where truths cut painfully into him like a hot knife in butter, plunging easily through his skin and heading straight to his heart, grabbing onto it tightly and squeezing, never letting go as it squeezed more and more faith out of him each day.

When he turned around again, his uncle was gone.

* * *

School the next day was as stressful as ever for Shuuichi, only doubled by the fact that he had stayed up late to finish his homework. He rubbed at his eyes tiredly. Today was another day where Kokichi would just not leave him alone. 

“Hey, hey, Shuuichi!” Kokichi whispered and Shuuichi kept his gaze turned forward, refusing to give into Kokichi, even as everyone giggled around him as Kokichi kept whispering for him.

“Kokichi,” the teacher said rubbing his forehead as he turned around from the whiteboard. “Stop whispering and focus on your work. Maybe if you paid any attention in this class instead of goofing off, you wouldn’t be failing.”

This time the class snickered at Kokichi, laughing at him instead of with him. Kokichi did not fancy that at all and opened his mouth, probably about to land himself in more trouble, but a loud scream cut him off. Not expecting the scream, everybody in the class flinched and stood up from their desks, rushing towards the door to see what was happening. Was there a fight? Shuuichi found himself raising from his desk, Kokichi watching him carefully and doing the same, cautiously walking over to the door with him.

Everybody had already filed out into the hallway, which made it easy for the duo to get out of the classroom (Shuuichi could vaguely hear the teacher screaming for everybody to return to their seats, but nobody paid him any mind) to see what was happening in the hall. With the sight that awaited Shuuichi, he almost wished he had listened to the teacher.

Down the hall, Shuuichi spotted the uniform all Ultimates had come to fear and suddenly understood the reason for the scream. The officer was dragging a girl by her legs as she tried to grab onto anything to keep her from being taken. Shuuichi recognized her as an upperclassman, but knew nothing about the girl aside from that. To Shuuichi, she had just been another face in the crowd, he would have never guessed she was an Ultimate if he was being asked to pick one out randomly.

He looked down at Kokichi next to him. His face was blank as he watched the scene and if he noticed Shuuichi looking at him, he did not feel like acknowledging him. They all watched in silence as the girl was finally dragged away. Shuuichi wondered what her last memories would be.

* * *

The very existence of the girl was immediately shrouded in darkness by the school and Shuuichi never heard a peep about her again.

He hoped she died with at least one person she left behind to love her in her memory, but he doubted it.

* * *

His uncle sighed as they ate dinner, making Shuuichi glance up at him with a questioning look. “Is something wrong, uncle?”

“I should be asking you that,” his uncle replied, looking at the boy with something akin to worry. Shuuichi looked down at his food again. “Is everything alright, Shuuichi? You’ve been awfully quiet for a few days. And while you’re normally pretty quiet, you just look more...stressed than normal?” He ended his comment as a question he wanted answered.

More stressed than normal? While that could technically be anything, Shuuichi knew what was causing him such agony over the past few days. “It’s nothing uncle. It’s just...while I was in a class they found an Ultimate and dragged her through the school. It made me worried about-” _Kokichi,_ he almost said, but managed to reel the thought in fast enough, “her.”

“Oh,” his uncle said, looking at nothing, a loss for words.

“It’s alright, uncle, let’s keep eating.”

Even when Shuuichi went back to eating, he could feel as his uncle’s gaze turn to him and linger long enough to make Shuuichi uncomfortable before he sighed again and went back to eating his own food.

Shuuichi finished quickly after, washed his dish, and went upstairs to his room.

He was worried for Kokichi, he was worried for the girl, he was worried about others, but he would never be worried about himself. It was his humble opinion that death was going to come for him soon one day, and if that was true, then he had no reason to worry about the inevitable.

His fingers twitched. Another reason he hated the truth. He hoped at least his uncle would forget him fast enough after he passed—there never was any use for him to get attached onto someone as useless and doomed as Shuuichi in the first place.  

* * *

“Bleh, Shuuichi looks even more depressed than normal.”

Shuuichi sighed, placing his half eaten sandwich down as he looked at Kokichi. He moved closer to Kokichi. “Did you see the way they dragged that girl out of the school?” He whispered in Kokichi’s ear.

Kokichi scowled at him as he turned his own head to whisper back into Shuuichi’s ear. “You know we shouldn’t talk about that here,” he replied harshly, talking just as quiet. When a few students started to look at them though, Kokichi pushed Shuuichi away and smiled. “Jeez, Shuuichi, you’re into some kinky things!” He exclaimed looking around as all the previously looking students turned bright red and turned back around. “Good, serves them right, those nosey fuck-knobs.”

Shuuichi was just as red next to him, and Kokichi laughed as he patted him on the back roughly a couple of times. “Oh, it’s nothing to be ashamed about Shuuichi, everybody already knows you’re a masochist.”

Shuuichi pushed him out of his seat and onto the floor. “Ouch~!” Kokichi mocked him and grinned when Shuuichi went bright red and hid his face behind his hands in shame.

* * *

Even though his uncle was swamped with work, he didn’t once ask Shuuichi to take on another case for him this time, probably still slightly traumatized by how Shuuichi had reacted last time to the end of the case. That was fine, his uncle would get over it, he always did.

* * *

When he went to school the next day, there was a slight buzz in the air and Shuuichi immediately knew that was a bad sign. Mass gossip like this was never good and it was one of Shuuichi’s most hated things.

He found Kokichi in the crowd of students walking around before classes started and pulled him aside. “Do you know what they’re all talking about?” He asked as he glanced around.

“Yuh-huh, apparently they’re going to be testing all the students now for being Ultimates. They’re going to be doing brain tests and using all that other junk they have to find out if someone is an Ultimate, including looking into what we’ve done in the past. That means the cops are going to be at our school all day probably.”

Shuuichi felt a chill run through him and he tried as hard as he could to maintain a straight face. He’d be fine if it was anyone but the police coming to investigate the students. Shuuichi was always a hair away from being called out by them, he was sure, so this would give them the perfect chance to take him in without any kind of legal struggle. “Oh yeah? And when are they going to be doing that?” If this was one of Kokichi’s lies, this was the most horrifying one yet.

Unfortunately, Kokichi was dead serious as he looked him in the eyes. “Tomorrow. All day long. They won’t be letting anyone get through them, Shuuichi. We weren’t even supposed to know, but thanks to _somebody_ sneaking around in confidential files, the information may or may not have been “accidentally” leaked to the whole student body. Wonder who’s hand slipped on that pretty little secret.” Judging by the way that Kokichi looked very happy right now, it wouldn’t take a genius to piece together that Kokichi did it, knowing his past. “Also, I wouldn’t try not coming in tomorrow, that’s practically a death sentence now, y’know?”

“I wasn’t planning on not coming in tomorrow anyway. I have nothing to fear.”

* * *

When school ended later that day, Shuuichi walked home, taking in the scenery for what was probably the last day of his life. He even managed to get a good up-close look at a crow he passed, hopping merrily on the ground, pecking at seeds and only moving out of the way when Shuuichi came too close to it, finding itself too lazy to fly up to the sky. Unless his talent switched from Ultimate Detective to Ultimate Luckster in the overnight, it would be pretty hard to avoid the fate tomorrow had for him. He was already thinking of what he would do when he got home. He wouldn’t tell his uncle, that was for sure. He’d probably try to pull some strings on his end to get Shuuichi saved. He would be arrested for harboring an Ultimate and lose his career in the process. No, it would be better if his uncle didn’t know until it was too late to save him, that way his reaction would be genuine and nobody would suspect a thing if he cried for Shuuichi after the fact.

He sighed, looking around. He was about half way home now and it wouldn’t be long until he would have to face his uncle for the last time.

“Shuuichi! Hey, Shuuichi!” He heard a familiar voice call from behind him, making Shuuichi stop in his tracks as he turned around to look at Kokichi.

“Huh? Kokichi? I didn’t kn-” The wind was knocked out of him and Kokichi slammed him into the wall in the nearby alleyway. Shuuichi couldn’t tell if it was because the smaller boy was strong or if Shuuichi was just weak and had given up trying to fight back against anything at this point.  

“Hey Shuuichi,” Kokichi said, face blank as he stared into Shuuichi’s golden eyes. He grabbed Shuuichi by his tie, forcing Shuuichi to bend down closer to Kokichi’s level. He watched as Kokichi’s face morphed into something cruel, a smile spreading impossibly wide over his face. He leaned into Shuuichi’s ear and whispered to him. “Let’s run away together, Shuuichi.”

Shuuichi stared blankly into space for a minute before nodding.

“When?” He asked.

“Tonight,” Kokichi replied. “I’ll see you at your house, midnight sharp.”

With that, he released Shuuichi’s tie, letting him stand up straight again as Kokichi slowly walked away. He raised his hand up as he walked away, back turned to Shuuichi. “See ya later, Shuuichi~!” Shuuichi watched as Kokichi slowly walked away, becoming a smaller and smaller dot in his vision as he walked who knows where.

Shuuichi reached to his neck and messed with his tie, adjusting it back into place and smoothing out his clothes, trying to pretend as if they weren’t all messed up from just being assaulted by Kokichi. He sighed once he figured he looked good enough to keep walking home and began the second half of his long trek back.

The soles of his feet ached when he walked. It felt like he was carrying the weight of the world.

 


	2. Holding Onto the Wire

****When he finally got home, his uncle wasn’t there to greet him, so he silently slipped off his shoes and dropped his satchel onto the floor.

He opened up one of the cabinets and pulled out a can of soup, following the instructions on it before throwing it in the microwave and slamming the door with a powerful force. His uncle finally peaked his head into the kitchen and smiled upon seeing Saiahra.

“Welcome home, Shuuichi!” He said, coming over to the boy to give him a quick pat on the back. He glanced into the microwave, watching as the bowl turned round and round and the empty soup can lay on the counter-top. “Treatin’ yourself to that soup today, boy? You always said something about loving that soup despite it being so bad for you.”

Shuuichi nodded meekly, turning his attention back to the microwave when it finally went off. He opened up the door, pulling the bowl out, not caring how it scorched his hands.

“Go run your hands under cold water!” His uncle shouted at him when he pulled his hands away only to see them beet red. To appease his uncle, he did so, knowing had it just been him in the house he would have let his hands stayed on the bowl until it burned his skin off and gave him scars and scabs all over his hands.

When he returned, he timidly ate his soup as his uncle prepared his own dish. He savored the taste of the soup, letting the flavor soak in before he swallowed it down. If there was ever a better time to eat the soup he loved, it was now.

“What happened at school today? Did that Kokichi kid bother you anymore? I didn’t get a call home, so I’m guessing everyone is still alive?” His uncle laughed heartily, digging into his own food.

Shuuichi gave him a small smile as he put his spoon down to answer his uncle. “Yeah, everything was fine today for once. I’m looking forward to going in tomorrow, I think I might have finally found a good friend,” he replied, thinking back on his day.

He knew his uncle tried not to let it show, but Shuuichi could see as his smile slowly morphed into a hesitant frown and his wrinkles became pronounced.

“Ah, is that so?” He said, picking at his food, but meeting Shuuichi’s eyes all the same.

“Yeah.”

“Well...just be careful Shuuichi. And remember, no friends at the house, okay?”

“Yeah, I know...trust me, I know.”

* * *

The time after dinner Shuuichi was lost in his own mind as he absentmindedly packed things into his now converted backpack; it would no longer be used for school, rather it would hold things that were actually essential to his survival. His uncle didn’t once come into Shuuichi’s room, which he was grateful for. It would have been much too hard and awkward to try to explain to his uncle why he had the door jammed by a chair and why he was packing a bag with clothes, food, and other essentials. He would see what Shuuichi was doing and try to stop him.

He looked in the bag, mentally checking off things that he would need. He’d packed as much clothes as he could into the space, knowing that at some point he was going to be cycling through old and dirty clothes at some point. He’d also, after much debate, thrown a few books in there with him. He knew they might just weigh him down, and were definitely taking up essential space, but he couldn’t resist taking a few anyway.

Taking food was the hardest. Most of what Shuuichi normally ate wouldn’t be able to go into his bag, so instead he threw instant noodle bricks into his bag, hoping they wouldn’t be too crushed in the long run. The cans of soup were liable to being crushed in his bag so he decided against taking those. He also took whatever smaller items that he could, nuts, crackers,and other small snack items that he felt wouldn’t take up too much room and also provide a good way for them to not starve in between meals. He did take a few water bottles though, putting them in a different compartment from his clothes, just in case they leaked.

For good measure, he also took the first aid kit that they had in the house and shoved that into his bag too. His uncle would need to get a new one, but he knew that he would understand.

With his bag finally packed, the last thing he threw in there was his wallet, almost overflowing with the money he shoved into it. He got a decent amount of money from his uncle whenever he got paid for a case Shuuichi had helped on, so Shuuichi was hoping that if they spent their money wisely it would last for a week or so. He took out his ID though and hid it in his desk, buried under papers. When they came and searched the house, the detectives would definitely find it, but by that time he would be long gone. If he could hide his identity from at least one person by not having it on him, that would be good enough.

By the time it was around 11:30 P.M., his uncle shot him a quick text on his phone that he would be ‘going to bed now,’ and Shuuichi walked to his uncle’s room to wish him a good night.

“You normally don’t come down to wish me good night, Shuuichi, you normally just send a text back. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, just happy that I found a friend for the first time in a long time,” Shuuichi replied, forcing a fake smile onto his face.

His uncle studied him for a minute. “Just be careful, Shuuichi, and don’t be sad if it doesn’t work out between the two of you. At least you have somebody besides Kokichi now,” his uncle said, smiling so genuinely at Shuuichi that Shuuichi felt his heart split in two at how much he hated himself for lying to his uncle.

He merely nodded and said goodbye to his uncle, closing one door to his life.

* * *

Twelve crept up on Shuuichi much faster then he would have liked. As soon as he was done talking to his uncle he had went upstairs and changed out of his uniform, putting on a shirt that was black with white stripes running down it on. He also threw on a hoodie, making sure he had something at least to combat the cold or to hide himself under. He also threw his phone away after wiping everything off of it. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and made sure that it was on tight once he’d gotten it properly on him.  

He quietly went to the front door, knowing that this was going to be the final time he stepped foot in this house. Whatever regrets and ghosts he had in this house, skeletons in the closet crying to be let out, wouldn’t matter anymore. Kokichi was right, they had to leave and never come back to this life; it was unlivable and everyday felt like agony.

He opened the front door, and when he did, a new door in his life opened with it.

* * *

Kokichi, despite telling him to be outside of his house at twelve sharp, had the balls to be late to meet him. In fact, it had made Shuuichi quite nervous, thinking that he had been set up by Kokichi. His fears were relieved though when he saw Kokichi walking towards him, a bag on his back too and looking all the ready to face whatever came his way.

“Wow, Shuuichi! You’re actually going to go with me?!” Kokichi looked surprised that Shuuichi had even came out to meet him .

Shuuichi nodded. “You’re an Ultimate too, right?”

“Nah, I just like to run away every once in awhile for fun. I figured I could help you run away though while I was at it this time.”

“You chose to run away the exact day before they were going to do Ultimate tests?” Shuuichi questioned him, humor finding its way into his voice.

“Is there a problem with that, Shuuichi? You know, if you’re going to treat me like this, I should have just called the police on you,” Kokichi said, laughing at Shuuichi’s face.

“You wouldn’t have done that Kokichi.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because, even if you don’t want to admit it, we know about each other.”

“Anyway, we should start walking now, we only have hours until your uncle noticies you missing.”

Shuuichi nodded and followed behind Kokichi as he walked.

They walked for hours on end, not stopping once. Whenever Shuuichi tried to ask where they were going, Kokichi said he would explain it all once they were far away enough that nobody would know them or pick up on their plans. For now, all Shuuichi had to do was follow, and something about just following the other boy didn’t make him feel anxious about where they were going. Kokichi knew what he was doing, and Shuuichi would trust the boy until he had a reason not to.

* * *

By the time dawn broke, Shuuichi and Kokichi had made some good distance from the town in which they had started in. Shuuichi was hard pressed to think anybody would know who they were here and that almost made him feel good. To the rest of the people here, they probably blended in with the rest of the school kids waking up and heading to school.  

“Are you going to tell me now, Kokichi?” Shuuichi asked, looking around at their surroundings. It seemed as if the town they were passing through was a town dominated by farms. There were fields of wheat and animals milling about in fields, casually basking in the sun’s warmth or eating the grass.

‘Nope! Not yet, Shuuichi! Jeez, can’t you be patient?” Kokichi said.

“Alright, well as long as you know where you’re going…” Shuuichi said, looking at Kokichi.

“I do, so don’t worry Shuuichi.”

Shuuichi went back to observing the world around him.

* * *

Walking was tiring and eventually both Shuuichi and Kokichi had to stop and cool off under the shade of a tree. The sun had been a welcome thing at first, considering they had been walking all night in the cold, but the sun had quickly turned mean with heat, making the two even more exhausted. Somewhere along the line they’d both taken off their hoodies and tied them around their waists, not wanting to bring on extra heat.

Shuuichi wiped some sweat out of his eyes and took a swig of water from one of the bottles he’d brought with him. When he was done, Kokichi snatched the bottle out of his hand before he had the chance to close it and began to gulp it down greedily.

“H-Hey! Don’t just drink it all in one go!” Shuuichi said, reaching over and trying to take the bottle from Kokichi, who in turn just moved his head away as he continued to drink. By the time Kokichi had stopped drinking, there was only a small bit left at the bottom of the bottle and Shuuichi groaned. Looks like they were down a whole water bottle already.

“Thanks, Shuuichi, that really hit the spot!” Kokichi said, throwing his hands behind his head and leaning back a bit.

“You can’t just drink an entire bottle of water, Kokichi,” Shuuichi scolded the boy. “We only have so many of those.”

“But I was so hottttt,” Kokichi whined at the boy, dramatically tilting forward and landing into the other boys lap. He let his body sprawl out over Shuuichi before Shuuichi pushed him out of his lap.

“You’re disgustingly sweaty.”

“So we agree I was hot, right?” Kokichi winked at Shuuichi and his only response was a groan, which seemed to be the only thing you could do when you were subject to Kokichi’s antics.  

“Let’s just keep going, Kokichi.”

“Ugh, a couple more minutes, okay, my beloved?” As much as he wanted to tell Kokichi not to call him ‘his beloved,’ he knew it would accomplish nothing, so he kept his mouth shut and waited for Kokichi to be finished resting so they could hit the road again.

* * *

By the time they got their bearings again and started moving, there seemed to be some kind of mid-day rush that was happening, probably people getting out to eat lunch quickly before they had to go back to work.  

Shuuichi obediently followed behind Kokichi, trying to stick as close to him as he could. Getting lost in a crowd would be horrible and would take more energy out them to find each other again than Shuuichi was willing to spare. They, or Shuuichi at least, had been going for a full 24 hours now and the effects were starting to show. It was a miracle that they hadn’t passed out under that tree earlier, but Shuuichi wasn’t exactly keen to try their luck any further.

As they walked, Kokichi stopped abruptly in front of him, making Shuuichi almost crash into him, and was looking to his side with a chilled neutral look. Shuuichi, shocked at Kokichi’s face, looked to see what had disturbed the boy so. What he found made him want to just die where he was standing. They had been passing an electronics store that had TVs in the front windows mutely playing the news. And there, on the screen, were both of their faces with the captions saying that they were runaways and suspected Ultimates, but that they were wanted alive as it was still a possibility they were kidnapped or ran away and had nothing to do with Ultimates. The bounty for them was already high for just having started the hunt, but Shuuichi wasn’t surprised. They were slowly going down in number of Ultimates to hunt and they were eager to get their hands on any left that they could—of course the bounty would be high.

Kokichi and him shared a knowing look for a minute, looking around to see if anyone was paying attention to them before beginning to walk again, going faster then they had been before. As they were walking, Kokichi grabbed his hoodie from around his waist and, despite the overbearing heat, shoved it onto his body, making sure that the hood was up and was concealing most of his face. Shuuichi followed suit, keeping his head down as he tried to not show his face from under the hood at all. He could already feel the sweat starting to form on the back of his neck, but he knew he needed to keep the hoodie on if he didn’t want to be spotted.  

They wandered for another couple of hours, watching as the bright sun went down low and the moon rose in the sky, before they eventually made it out of that town and into what seemed like a forest-like area. Kokichi walked into the forest and with a moment’s hesitation Shuuichi had followed. They didn’t have to walk far to find a small opening in the forest, where the trees surrounded it in a circle and the grass, while still horribly long and probably insect ridden, wasn’t horrible. It honestly looked as if it had been a small camping site sometime because there were logs set up on either side of a patch in the ground that was just dirt. They could burn some firewood there if they needed to, but neither of them had the strength at this point to do so.

Kokichi looked around, gauging their surroundings. “We can stop here for the night,” he said and Shuuichi groaned with relief. Finally, they could take a well deserved rest.

Shuuichi sat down next to one of the logs, almost passing out the moment he allowed himself to feel relaxed after a whole day of walking underneath the blazing sun. He took the backpack off of his back and rummaged through it, pulling out some of the snacks that he had brought.

Kokichi sat down next to Shuuichi, grabbing a few snacks out of the bag and began to munch on them lethargically.

“Do you think we're safe here?” Shuuichi asked in between bites of his food.

“Mm, yeah, I'm sure Shuuichi,” Kokichi said with confidence.

“If we're safe now will you tell me where we’re going?”

Kokichi paused in his eating. “Ugh, why is it so crucial for you to know where we're going. It's not like you're the one who knows the way anyway.”

“I’d just like to know that _you_ know where you're going, Kokichi.”

“Fine. If you must know, we're going to a place where Ultimates have been gathering for years. The general public doesn't know about it and that's the way it should stay.”

“Then how'd you find out about it?” Shuuichi questioned him, raising an eyebrow.

“Oof, too bad, so sad, you already used up your one big important question limit of the day! Try again tomorrow!”

“Hey! That’s not something we agreed on! That's not even a thing!”

Kokichi just laughed and allowed himself to slide down more and more until he was laying down with his head touching the top of the log.

“Good night, Shuuichi.”

Shuuichi looked at the other boy for a moment as he closed his eyes and began to drift off. With a sigh, and a final look around to check that they were safe, Shuuichi did the same and fell asleep since the first time he'd left home. The forest ground was uncomfortable to lay on, and the cold started to bite into him a bit, but he forced himself to ignore it for now. He chose to run away; he chose to look away from the truth. He had no right to be complaining. At least he was still alive.

He fell asleep to the crickets chirping noisily in the distance.

* * *

When Shuuichi awoke, his mouth was terribly dry and his lips were slightly cracked. He needed a drink, but for right now he was still too asleep to be worried about that. He groaned and rolled onto his other side, wondering why it was so cold. He grabbed the closest pillow he could find with his eyes closed and hugged it close to him. He could have sworn he heard some giggling but brushed it off as the remnant of a dream playing through his head.

“Wow Shuuichi, I never knew you wanted to cuddle with me! If you wanted to, you could have just asked last night!”

Shuuichi’s breathing momentarily stopped before his eyes shot open and he released Kokichi from his arms, who was laughing like a hyena.  

“No, cuddle with me for longer, Shuuichi! You can't just leave me after a one-night stand!”

“We didn't do anything last night, but you do know that's just the entire point of a one-night stand, right?”

“How do you know we didn't do anything last night?” Kokichi challenged, looking very amused by Shuuichi.

“Because I'm pretty sure I would have remembered something like that.”

“Maybe that's my Ultimate talent.”

Shuuichi glared at Kokichi. “Can you ever just stop for a second and be serious.”

Kokichi gasped. “Me? Be serious? That burns me Shuuichi.”

Shuuichi look at him pointedly, making Kokichi laugh harder. “Fine, let's just get up and start getting ready to go again.”

“Yes, sir, Shuuichi, sir!” Kokichi faked a a salute, ducking under Shuuichi’s arm when he tried to play hit Kokichi.

While Kokichi got up and stretched, Shuuichi stayed on the ground, looking up at the sky as the light slightly filtered through the leaves.

He wondered how his uncle was doing right now.

* * *

By the time they'd finally gotten up, Shuuichi had managed to shake most of his exhaustion off, although he found that his legs were sore from walking so long yesterday.

“We’re going now?” Shuuichi asked shifting the backpack on his back. He'd picked up everything from last night, making sure it looked as if they were never there.

“Yup! We're going to keep going.”

“Alright, well then, let's go,” Shuuichi said to him beginning to walk forward, trying to get Kokichi to move with him.

“Where do you think you're going without me, my beloved Shuuichi?”

“For the last time, Kokichi, nothing happened between us and never will.”

“Say that doesn’t make it true. Plus, didn't you know that I'm the Ultimate Fortune Teller? I know for a fact that we'll end up together!”

“This way, right?”

“Ouch, ignoring me now, Shuuichi? To think, my love would do such a cruel thing. But yeah, it's that way.”

Shuuichi nodded and kept walking, allowing Kokichi to walk in front of him and take the lead once he caught up. He let Kokichi lead them, walking behind him who had his head up in confidence, as if nothing in the world could bother him.

Shuuichi wished he had that kind of confidence in himself, but since he didn't, he'd put what little confidence and faith he had into Kokichi.

* * *

They made it out of the forest and into the next town. Despite the heat, not as bad as yesterday, but still bad, they put their hoodies on with the hoods up.

“Can't risk being caught,” Kokichi had said and Shuuichi had agreed. It was weird to think about it, to think that he had spent his entire life chasing people who were doing the same thing to hide, like he was doing now; his life was a surreal shadow of its former self.

* * *

The next town they were walking through vaguely reminded him as something out of a ghost-town, which Shuuichi was grateful for. They only had to pass people every once and awhile and no one seemed intent to pay them much mind.

At some point, Kokichi had slowed down his pace about to get a bit closer to Shuuichi.

“You holding up well, Shuuichi?” Kokichi asked, eyeing the boy as he noticed his panting and slow, laging pace.

Shuuichi swallowed, wincing as his throat hurt from how dry it was. “Not really,” he admitted, bringing one of his arms up to wipe away some of the sweat forming on his forehead; he was sure the back of his hoodie was probably soaked in the back too.

Shuuichi couldn't see Kokichi’s reaction as he had his head held in such a way that it was hidden, but he could hear Kokichi mumble and hum for a moment.

“We need to stop,” Kokichi said, finally.

“No, we’re still too close to where we came from, we need to keep walking,” Shuuichi said, weakly shaking his head.

“Listen, I didn't fucking do this just for you to die before we could reach our destination. I'm not exactly the Ultimate Doctor, okay? I'll admit that one. So if you get sick or hurt or injured it'll be serious. I can't risk you getting heat stroke or overheating out here.”

Without waiting for Shuuichi’s response, Kokichi grabbed his arm and began dragging him off the main path that they had been walking on. He lead them through and alleyway, where they found shelter from the sun. They hid behind a dumpster as Shuuichi peeled his hoodie off and leaned his head back against the wall, caring only a little for how filthy it was.

Kokichi took the backpack from Shuuichi and rummaged through it, picking out one of the full water bottles, opened it for Shuuichi, and handed it to him. The water was warm, but it would still be better than him carrying on the way that he was.

Shuuichi took the bottle from Kokichi and drank the entire bottle down, sighing as it relieved some of the pain from his throat. While he was doing that, Kokichi went through the bag, checking the inventory of what they had at this point. The water was being used much more quickly than it was supposed to be, but it was better to be safe than sorry. They'd need to restock soon on that, but first they definitely needed a way to avoid this from happening again in the future.

The sun was still high in the sky, probably around midday at this point, and unless Kokichi wanted to risk Shuuichi getting heat stroke, it would be best to try to switch the times they were walking around.

“Hey, Shuuichi, let’s try to find some place to rest until the sun goes down a bit. It’s too hot to keep walking around like this.”

Shuuichi nodded, agreeing with the sentiment. Anything to stay out of the path of the sun would be nice at this point. It was a mistake to think they could hide in the light. If they wanted maximum efficiency they would have eventually had to switch to walking around at night when less people were awake. The problem with sleeping during daylight hours was the possibility of being caught unaware.

Kokichi zipped the bag back up and handed it to Shuuichi who put it on after hesitantly putting his hoodie back on. It was wet and stuck uncomfortably to him, but they would have to make do with what they had. He looked at Kokichi, who had already turned his back to him, and started to lead him away from the alley. He was struck with a sudden feeling of warmth for the boy who had insisted that they stop, if only for a moment. Had he been alone, he would have kept walking; now that he thought about it, had it not been for Kokichi, he probably wouldn’t even be alive at this point. He was prepared to die that day, he was prepared to walk straight into the jaws of the monster and not look back.

He looked ahead of him, noticing that Kokichi had stopped.

“You sure you’re going to be okay to keep going?” He asked with what Shuuichi thought was a hint of worry.

“Yeah, let’s keep going.”

Kokichi nodded and waited for Shuuichi to catch up before beginning to walk again.

* * *

They found shelter on the outskirts of the town under some trees. Even better yet, a breeze had started and they were in the perfect place to catch the breeze, so they agreed to sit out most of the remaining hours of sunlight under the trees while they talked.

“We’re going to need to stop for some more supplies soon,” Kokichi said, showing Shuuichi the inside of the bag. Two of the waters, that they were supposed to drink with moderation, were already gone, and they were currently eating some of the snacks, so those were going quick too.

“Kokichi, you never showed me what was in your bag,” Shuuichi said, struck with the sudden realization.

“Nishishi,” Kokichi laughed out. “So you finally noticed, huh, Shuuichi. Man, you can really be pretty slow and forgetful sometimes. Anyway, all that’s in my bag is some guns, a knife, a compass, and some other random stuff that you don’t need to worry about.”

Shuuichi sighed, expecting the question to be evaded, but still finding it annoying anyway. “You’re not going to tell me? Why?”

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

“There’s no way you have guns in there, Kokichi, you’re not old enough to buy them yet.”

“You’re right! That’s why I stole them.”

“Want to show me the bag to prove it?” Shuuichi challenged.

“Ooh, good bait, but no bite!” Kokichi said, laughing. “If we need to go into my bag, we’ll go into it. Until then, don’t worry about it.”  

“...I think I’m going to worry about it even more now,” Shuuichi said.

* * *

The sun had went down enough that the temperature was cool instead of searingly hot, which meant that they were good to start walking again. The hoodie hadn’t dried yet and Shuuichi was itching to change his clothes. He felt disgustingly dirty.

“Let’s try to get to the next town before we have to stop to sleep for the day.”

“So we’re going to be flipping our schedule now?” Shuuichi asked.

“It wouldn’t be good for us to wait much longer to do it.”

Shuuichi supposed he had a point with that. The longer they waited the harder it could get to change it. They needed to get their traveling schedule settled sooner rather than later.

“Alright then. Lead away.”

Kokichi smiled at Shuuichi and began to lead them in the direction of their next destination.

* * *

If Shuuichi thought that the town they had been in look like a ghost town during the day, it was positively spooky as the sunlight faded from the sky. Shuuichi was sure they passed maybe only one person the entire time they were walking.

“This place is actually pretty creepy,” Shuuichi admitted to Kokichi, who was walking only slightly in front of him.

“Not the most active town, that’s for sure,” Kokichi grumbled out, looking around them. It was too silent and it raised so many red flags in his mind.  

Finally, after what seemed like forever, they found their way out of that town and into the road leading to the next one. Unlike the last time, where it was a dirt road, this was an actual highway. It seemed to be a road that merged with another nearby city so despite it being night time there were still a few cars that would drive by, scaring Shuuichi with their proximity and speed. Kokichi would just laugh as Shuuichi stumbled at the cars’ forceful blowback.

“What are you laughing at?” Shuuichi asked jokingly, knowing full well how funny it must have looked to see him almost fall on his face a few times.

“You’re so tall, you can barely keep your balance as the cars pass by.”

Shuuichi snorted, gently nudging the boy. “Yeah, well at least I can reach the top shelf of a cabinet,” he retorted.

Kokichi let out a fake wide gasp. “You did not just go there.”

“Oh, I think I just did.”

Both boys were silent for a moment before they let the laughter they had been holding in out, watching as their breath showed in the cold night.

They bickered the rest of the way down the road.

* * *

By the time that Kokichi declared that they should definitely stop, the sun was beginning to rise, illuminating the sky with a glow of orange. They both stopped to appreciate the glow; the raw beauty of nature that they got to witness firsthand.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Shuuichi asked, looking at the sun with awe.

“Yeah,” Kokichi agreed, looking straight ahead into the sunrise.

They decided to take shelter in a nearby set of woods again, and snacked on foods for a bit, taking care to make a mental note of what they should stop using and what they should try to use more of.

“I still have money you know,” Shuuichi added in, looking as Kokichi looked through the bag.

“We won’t need to use it, don’t worry,” Kokichi said.

“What do you mean? We’re running out of supplies, especially water, aren’t we?”

“No, we’re doing just fine. Don’t you worry bout a thing Shuuichi,” Kokichi said, smiling at him brightly. His eyes revealed what his smile tried to hide.

Shuuichi very much doubted that they were doing “fine” but decided that he would keep his own opinions on the matter to himself. If Kokichi was lying, he was only lying to himself. It hadn’t been that long since they’d left home, but they were already running low on things. It was discouraging, but Shuuichi refused to stop going forward at this point. He had Kokichi by his side, and, for now, that would have to be enough.

Shuuichi watched as the treetops gave way to a pattern of light showing through, the sun rising higher and higher in the sky. He watched with a calm serenity, feeling himself relax as he just stared at the beauty of it all.

“Sorry to interpret you sightseeing, Shuuichi, but we should go to sleep now,” Kokichi said, plopping down next to him.

Shuuichi bit his lip, turning his sight away from the treetop. “Yeah, we should.”

Kokichi placed his hoodie onto the ground and rolled over onto it, shutting his eyes and trying to go to sleep.

Shuuichi took off his hoodie as well, but once he placed it on the ground he got up and took a new pair of clothes out of the bag. He changed quickly out of the dirty, sweat soaked clothes and felt a bit more at ease as he felt the cold, unused clothes touch his skin.

Sighing in relief, he sunk back down the ground, making sure to lay on his hoodie as he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to take him.

* * *

By the time they woke up, the sun low in the sky.

“I think that might be the first full night of sleep I've gotten in years,” Kokichi said, laughing. “It must have been because my beloved Shuuichi was laying down so close next to me! Of course I’m kind of insulted he didn’t want to cuddle again, but that’s okay, whatever my beloved is comfortable with.”

* * *

“How do you like this town? Doesn’t it just make you want to settle down and start a family here?” Kokichi remarked as they walked through the town, watching as the last of the kids playing outside begrudgingly went back into their houses, bidding a farewell to their friends until the next day.

“It is nice, I’ll admit,” Shuuichi said. It was very domestic, and Shuuichi couldn’t help but feel like a voyeur peeking into the kind of life he would never have. A small spark of jealousy welled up in his chest, but he smothered it out; it wasn’t their fault he was bitter at the world that had declared him unworthy of receiving such times.

“What goes on inside your mind?” Kokichi suddenly asked.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You were just staring off into space. Were you thinking about me?” Kokichi asked, winking at him.

“No, I was just thinking about what it would have been like to be normal as a kid.”

“What, did you seriously let the fact that you were...different keep you from playing with other kids?”

“A bit,” Shuuichi admitted. “I also liked to just stay in and read though, so it’s not like it’s just that that held me back.”

Kokichi stared at him, face emotionless for a second before he sighed in frustration. “You’re not lying, which is good because I hate liars, but you’re also not telling the whole truth, are you?”  

Shuuichi almost stopped in his tracks, but didn’t, determined to keep walking with Kokichi and not give away anything. He stayed silent, letting his silence be an admission of guilt, but at the same time not egging on the conversation.

Kokichi seemed to get the message because he dropped the conversation for once.  

Soon they slowed to a stop on a corner and Kokichi pulled out a roll of crackers, happily munching on it and passing it to Shuuichi every once and allowing him to take a few before handing it back up.

“This was the last roll of crackers,” Kokichi said, crumpling up the wrapper in his hand and forcing Shuuichi to slow to a stop so he could shove the wrapper back into the backpack.

“That’s going to get crumbs everywhere,” Shuuichi sighed out.

“Eh, don’t worry about it too much, Shuuichi, it’s not like any mice or anything are going to crawl into it in the middle of the night.”

“Still…” Shuuichi tried to persist, but it was a lost message on Kokichi, who’s attention was taken by a convenience store in the distance he had spotted.

“Wow, look Shuuichi, we should go there and restock on waters and supplies,” Kokichi suggested, gripping Shuuichi’s wrist and pointing to the store.

“Is that really something we should spend our money on right now? We could save it for something better, we’re not even all the way out of waters yet.”

Kokichi laughed at him and Shuuichi cocked an eyebrow. “What’s so funny about what I said?” He asked.

“Oh, it’s just funny that you think we have to get it with money.”

“Well we shouldn’t just ste—” Shuuichi cut himself off, seeing the knowing and gleeful look on Kokichi’s face. “No, Kokichi, we can’t steal.”

“Why not? We’re already on the run. What are they going to do, kill us twice for stealing?” Kokichi asked, now angry.

Shuuichi supposed he had a point. They couldn’t do more to them then send them to their deaths or whatever else they felt like doing to them before that.

“I-I...just this once, okay?” He asked, closing his eyes and taking in a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes, Kokichi was smiling brightly at him. “Yay! I’m so glad my precious Shuuichi trusts me enough to steal for us.” Upon seeing Shuuichi’s hesitant face, he stopped his cheerful behavior. “What’s wrong, Shuuichi?” He asked with concern, looking up at him with a worried face.

“I’m just scared. What if you get caught, Kokichi? What do I do then? What will you do then? I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Shuuichi admitting, tears welling up at the bottom of his eyes.

“Hey,” Kokichi said softly, wiping tears from the bottom of Shuuichi’s eyes. “Don’t cry. I promise, nothing’s going to happen to me, okay?” He said and gave Shuuichi reassuring smile, his eyes soft as he looked up at Shuuichi.

“Alright.” Shuuichi reached up to his eye and replaced Kokichi’s hand with his own, drying the last of his tears. “Alright. Sorry for overreacting a bit there.”

“Aww, did Shuuichi overreact because he cares about me?” Kokichi laughed, attitude going back as if nothing had happened. Shuuichi looked away, refusing to answer. “Fine. Be that way and don’t answer. You’ve already told me enough as is. But, you wouldn’t mind giving me your backpack, would you Shuuichi?”

“Hmm? For what?” Shuuichi asked Kokichi.

“So I can climb in it and have you carry me around of course! Don’t ask such stupid questions, Shuuichi. If you honestly can’t figure out what I’m planning to do with it, then just hand it over and watch.”

Begrudgingly, Shuuichi took the backpack off of his back and handed it over to Kokichi who slung it over his own back, handing Shuuichi his to keep in return, which was surprisingly light. “See ya in a few Shuuichi! Make sure not to look too suspicious out here. Just go stand at the side of the building or something.”  

“Ah, okay…” he trailed off, watching as Kokichi went into the store.

Shuuichi bit his lip. It was amazing to him how fearless and composed Kokichi was, or at least appeared to be, with these kinds of things.

He did as Kokichi instructed, fighting back his nerves to check what Kokichi was doing in the store. That was a surefire way to get both Kokichi and Shuuichi caught.

Shuuichi looked at the backpack he was still holding, his fingers twitching with the urge to look in it.

Giving the building a quick side glance to see if Kokichi was near the front, Shuuichi went further to the side of the building, letting his body be hidden a bit more by the shadows, and opened up the backpack. Inside were no guns or compass or anything that Kokichi had spoken about, but instead just a leather notebook. Searching in the other compartments proved to be useless. It seems he had only brought the notebook with him after all. Before he could check anything in the notebook, he heard the jingle of bells from the front door and rapidly zipped the backpack back up, pretending as if he had been holding it without going in it the whole time.

Kokichi, Shuuichi noticed as he emerged from the store, had a troubled look on his face. Shuuichi resisted the urge to ask him what was wrong, waiting until Kokichi got closer.

“You didn’t get caught did you?” Shuuichi asked, looking around for any police officers that might be coming for them soon.

“Pfft, if I got caught Shuuichi they wouldn’t have left me leave. Here you go.” Kokichi took the backpack off and handed it back to Shuuichi, taking his own back, who opened it before putting it back on, checking to make sure that Kokichi really had restocked it. What he didn’t expect to find in there was a curled up newspaper. He looked up at Kokichi, who’s face had grown grave. “Go ahead, open it.”

Shuuichi uncurled the newspaper, not having to look far to see what had made Kokichi’s mood so sour. **WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. SUSPECTED ULTIMATES.** Below that was a picture of both them, a picture Shuuichi didn’t even realize being taken of himself. He grimaced even more when he realized his surroundings. This is was definitely taken by a police officer. They’d had it out for him since the beginning, hadn’t they?

“So we’re officially wanted now,” Shuuichi stated plainly, curling it back up.

“Yeah.” Ouma took the paper from him and threw it in the trash. There was no use in keeping something like that around. It would only serve to bring Kokichi and Shuuichi down. “That doesn’t mean anything we didn’t already know though. All that told us was that now instead of missing child services looking for us and trying to take us in alive, now everyone will be looking for us to kill us. This shouldn’t come as anything new to you. You and I both knew we weren’t going to stay as a missing children case for long.” As much as he hated to admit it, Kokichi had just told him the truth. It was very well known that even though the wanted posters always had the words “dead or alive” attached to them, most people would never pass up the chance to kill an Ultimate. In fact people were often praised for it. “But hey, who reads the newspaper these days anyway! I’m sure no one will see it.”

If it was in the newspaper, it was bound to be broadcast over every single news station there was. He appreciated that Kokichi had tried to comfort him a bit.  He said nothing in return, staring at the garbage can Kokichi had thrown the paper into.

“Well then, we better get moving before sloth-man in there notices something is amiss.”

* * *

While they were walking, Shuuichi came up close to Kokichi, who raised his head a bit, giving him a curious look from beneath the hood.

“Hey, about your talent…”

Kokichi hummed in agreement. “Are you finally going to take a guess at it?” He asked, a smile spreading across his face.

“Are you something like the Ultimate Thief?”

“Ding ding ding! Shuuichi got it! Well, got close enough that is. I’m actually the Ultimate Phantom Thief, to be specific.”

“Ah! I see, that explains a—”

“That was a lie, of course, Shuuichi.”

“What? Why?”

“If I was the Ultimate Thief I would have already stolen the one thing I desire most a long time ago.”

“Huh? What’s that?” Shuuichi leaned in interested.

Ouma looked him in the eyes for a minute before sighing and shaking his head in defeat. “How can somebody like Shuuichi be so dumb and dense sometimes?” Ouma questioned himself, but also loud enough that Shuuichi could hear it.

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re dumb and dense. Geez, Shuuichi, don’t tell me now I need to teach you the meaning of words too.”  

They kept walking as night faded and became even darker. It was so dark that Shuuichi almost didn’t notice the two crows on the wire overhead until they cawed and cooed, making both of them jump and look at them. The crows tilted their head every which way and that, looking at them with beady eyes, their entire being seeming to merge into the very fabric of the world itself. One of them cawed again, and the other crow cooed in return.

“Just some stupid birds,” Kokichi mumbled and turned back around.

Shuuichi bit his lip, but turned around to go forward with Kokichi, trying to ignore the feeling he got as if he was being stared straight through his back. Nerves getting too much again, he turned around, fearing the worst, especially after that newspaper, but still only saw the crows, looking at him with curiosity. He shook it off and turned back ahead, not daring to look back again.

They walked off with the crows cooing and cawing after them, not moving from the wire at all.

“Ugh, don’t they realize they wouldn’t even be that hard to hit if someone wanted to hit ‘em with a rock or something? They’re not even flying, they’re just sitting there on a wire, plain as can be.” Kokichi would never hit the birds himself, but the echoing of their noises was more than enough to make him slightly annoyed.

“Just leave them on the wire, they’re not hurting anyone.”

“Hurting my ears is what they’re hurting.” But nonetheless, Kokichi agreed and dropped the subject.

Even when the cooing and cawing of the crows faded into the distance, Shuuichi still felt as if there was a presence staring into his back, but whenever he looked back, even in one of the street lights, there was still nothing.

* * *

In the distance, where they could not hear or see them anymore, the crows clicked and cawed and cooed as they leant over the wire, as if they were to set off with their wings, but they always stayed firm to the wire, refusing to let go.  

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey what'sup my name is Pastel and I'll never post at a good time! 
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys like the chapter!! 
> 
> Just as a notice, I will not be posting on either story next week as I will be away for the weekend doing something! Thank you for understanding!


	3. Love's Wind Tries to Lift You Up Despite the Chains

“Do you believe that there’s anything out there? Are we it? The only planet capable of sustaining life?” 

“Interesting...but mostly depressing to think about for too long,” Kokichi teased. “Next question!” 

“Fate and or destiny?” 

“Hmmmm, hard to say. Again, pretty depressing to think about for too long.”

“Do you think that, in the end, nothing we do there will even matter?” 

“Woah there, Linkin Park, chill out.” 

Shuuichi glared at Ouma, making him laugh. “You know that’s not what I meant. Plus, they’re so old now.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure you like listening to some of the more recent, but same bullshit, songs. But really, do you have any non-depressing questions?”

“Kokichi, what about those is so depressing to you?”

“You’re thinking too far off into the future! Thinking of things that don’t even concern us. So what? Who cares if there’s other life? Why don’t you just try surviving on this rock for a while before thinking of things that shouldn’t even impact you?” 

Shuuichi stopped speaking for a moment, thinking on his words. “...Thanks, Kokichi.” 

“Anytime, Shuuichi.” 

His curiosity in the unknown squashed, Shuuichi looked up. The clear skies revealed beauty in the tapestry of stars above. He felt content and fulfilled. 

* * *

Kokichi hummed a little tune as he walked along the railroad tracks. It was much better for them to see now, night turning into near sunrise, making Shuuichi’s eyes droop with tiredness.

“Don’t tell me we’re gonna sleep in the forest again,” Shuuichi complained when he noticed Ouma looking towards it. 

“We’re really close to the next town, but...are we really sure we want to risk it? Doesn’t seem to safe to me.” 

Ugh, screw their safety for once. Shuuichi understood, really he did, why Kokichi was hesitant to follow through with whatever plan Shuuichi was thinking of. If it involved endangering either one of their lives, it was something he was even less willing to listen to. “Don’t you think we should talk to some people? See what they know about us?” 

“No offense Shuuichi, but I quite frankly think that’s the worst idea you’ve ever had.” 

“Fine, then not that part, but what about a motel or something? We could probably afford to get one of those for the night.” 

“That’s what you want to waste your money on?” Kokichi questioned him. 

“Well, you said it yourself—something about us not needed money because you could just steal things. Now, I know—” 

“Apparently you don’t know anything, Shuuichi.” 

“What is it this time?” 

“You do realize that if we go to a motel, we’ll be trapped if someone came for us, right? You simply must. Motels are not the same as hotels. Motels have both the window and the door on the same side, so there would be no way for us to escape if something like that happened.” 

“I understand that.” 

“Then you must also realize that it is a bad idea.” 

Shuuichi sighed. “It’s not as bad as an idea as you’re making it out to be.”  

“I want to know what has to be going through your mind to make you think that.” 

Shuuichi stayed silent, making Kokichi look at him with tired eyes. 

“You truly don’t give a shit about our safety do you?” Kokichi asked him sadly. 

“We’re going to die.”

“We won’t!” Ouma shouted, getting frustrated. He turned his head around to look at Shuuichi while they kept walking. “Jeez, you're such a pessimist. Can’t you just chill for once? Get your head out of your emo ass for five seconds.” 

“I’m simply telling you what I’ve deduced from our journey so far and what has happened in the past.” 

“Deductions are just that, deductions. There’s nothing saying or guaranteeing that you’ll be one hundred percent correct. And, yes, I know what you’re going to say about your ‘deductions being correct.’ You can’t have it both ways, Shuuichi. You can’t say you’re wrong and doubt yourself and then be so confident in yourself the next second, that’s not how it works.” 

Shuuichi looked at him with a stone cold, unamused look, but Kokichi shrugged it off, still not breaking eye contact with him. 

“Look at me like that all you want. Do your powers of deduction tell you I’m correct?” 

Shuuichi opened his mouth, preparing to reply, but got cut off when Kokichi gave a sharp yelp and fell straight down onto the ground. “Kokichi?!” Shuuichi shouted with confusion, rushing up to him. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?!” 

Kokichi groaned, lifting his head off of the ground and rubbing a spot on his head that looked particularly tender. “Fuck,” he mumbled under his breath. 

“Kokichi?” Shuuichi asked, nervously reaching towards Kokichi to attempt to help him up. “You okay? What happened?” 

Kokichi hummed a little note of recognition to what Shuuichi was asking. “Ah, nothing, I’m simply dying. Don’t worry about it, Shuuichi.” 

“Wha-What?” 

Kokichi laughed, seeing how horrified Shuuichi had gotten from his statement. “That was a lie, Shuuichi, of course I’m not dying. See, nothing will kill us, we won’t die, we’ll be fine, stop worrying.” Kokichi slowly picked himself off the ground, and Shuuichi certainly didn’t miss the way that Kokichi favored his left side a bit more when he was trying to stand. 

Shuuichi looked at the ground, and a sudden feeling of understanding flowed through him. Shuuichi pressed his foot into the ground where Kokichi had first fell and sighed when he found the hole that was hidden by the grass. Kokichi watched Shuuichi raptly as he mimicked the way that Kokichi had walked right into it. There was no way they would have been able to see that, especially because they were so distracted. “Is your ankle alright?” 

“Of course! It was just a little fall! Anyway, stop playing around near it,” Ouma urged, and pulled Shuuichi away from it and closer to him. 

“Let me look at you ankle,” Shuuichi said, kneeling down on the ground and trying to look at his ankle. 

“No, honestly, it’s okay, Shuuichi,” Kokichi claimed, attempting to calm him down. 

Shuuichi ignored his assurances and lifted up Kokichi’s pant leg and sighed. “Kokichi, it’s clearly sprained. That’s not ‘fine.’” 

Kokichi stayed silent, trying not to wince as Shuuichi prodded it for a moment before Shuuichi sighed and brought out the first aid kit from his backpack. He pulled out the gauze and set it on top of the kit. 

“Sit down,” Shuuichi commanded, pulling at Kokichi’s shirt lightly, trying to get him into a better position for Shuuichi to wrap his ankle up. “Come on, do it,” he added when Kokichi just gave a grunt and tried to shift away from Shuuichi. 

“It’ll be better in no time,” Kokichi tried. 

“Yeah, it’ll be better in no time when I wrap it up.” 

Kokichi stared at him before slowly sinking to the ground, placing his leg out and allowing Shuuichi to begin to tend to the injury. “You only have so much of that stuff. What happens if you need it for something else?” 

“We’ll deal with that when we get to it. Plus, there will still be enough left after we do this, so no worries.” 

“You really confuse me sometimes, Shuuichi,” Kokichi said, huffing at him. 

“With what?” 

“Nothing...just nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Kokichi said, exhaustion and pain tempering his protests. 

Shuuichi let the conversation drop, falling into the calming motion of wrapping up Shuuichi’s ankle. After a bit, he leaned back from it. “There?” He phrased his comment as a hesitant ask. “Get up and see how it feels.” Shuuichi rose to his feet before Kokichi could, reaching his hand down offering it to Kokichi. Kokichi gave a small smile, shaking his head in a happy way, before looking back up at Shuuichi and taking his hand, letting Shuuichi essentially pull him up. 

Kokichi fidgeted with his ankle, testing it by moving it slightly in directions and lifting up, seeing what it’s limits were. He paused. “...You can let go of my hand now. Or never. I like the latter more, if I was being honest.” Shuuichi looked down at their hands, and upon noticing they  _ were  _ still holding onto Kokichi’s own, let go with a cry. “Oh, I scared off Shuuichi. Whoops. Go back to holding my hand.”

Shuuichi blushed. “I was only holding it to make sure you didn’t fall again or anything,” he tried to deny. 

“If you’re going to lie at least make it more interesting. What a lame excuse.” 

“Sleep?” Shuuichi changed the subject. 

“Yeah,” Kokichi agreed. 

“A motel?” 

“Might as well.” 

* * *

“This is the cheapest one in the area.”

“This is the first motel we’ve come across, Kokichi.” 

“Alright, so maybe it’s only the cheapest one we’ve seen.” 

“How are we going to get a room?” 

“Didn’t you think of this? I mean, you are the one who wanted to come here in the first place, didn’t you think this through at all?” 

Shuuichi grunted, uncomfortable with Kokichi’s questioning. “Well you don’t have any ideas either.” 

“Because I’m not the one who wanted this!” 

“But you really don’t have a single idea of how we’re going to get through this?” 

“I have one, and like this entire situation itself, it’s risky.”

“Do we have a choice?” 

“Yes, Shuuichi, we do have a choice. Our choice is to go and sleep somewhere else, somewhere safer and avoid this crazy mess.” 

“Well you know what, Kokichi? We probably look like a crazy mess to other people just standing here and arguing, so let’s move on or get this over with.”

“People argue all the time with people in front of motels, but alright, whatever you say,” Kokichi grumbled. 

Thankfully, their hoods were already up by the time they walked in. Shuuichi politely and daintily pressed the bell down, and when no one came to assist them in a few minutes, Kokichi slammed his hand down on the bell hard, making Shuuichi cringe. “Hey! Anyone there?” 

When there still wasn’t any response, Shuuichi watched as Kokichi’s face grew red with frustration as he shifted on his feet with every passing second. 

“Hey!” Kokichi tried again, slamming his hand down on the bell, making a loud annoying chiming noise echo through the room. 

Finally, from somewhere in the area behind the desk, in the back of the little office, Shuuichi heard the sound of things falling. 

“Oh, sorry,” a teenager said, approaching the front desk. “What can I do for you?” He asked with a yawn. He looked like he had just woken up from a nap, especially with the faint trail of dried drool that Shuuichi could see. 

“A room, please,” Kokichi asked, politely as possible. He spoke with confidence though, not letting through any waver in his voice. Shuuichi admired him for that. If it had been him, he would have probably already got himself in some kind of suspicion. 

“Yeah, sure. For how many people?” 

Shuuichi could see Kokichi visibly twitch. “Two,” Kokichi grit out. 

“Okay.” More clicks on his keyboard, staring blankly at the screen for a few seconds before moving the mouse. He yawned again, rubbing his eyes, but it didn’t seem to be working as his eyes drifted close for a minute too long before he jolted to being semi-awake again. 

Seeing Kokichi’s fist tighten in aggravation, Shuuichi hesitated, but made up his mind at last and reached over and took Kokichi’s hand into his own, gently unfurling it. Kokichi squeezed his hand tight. 

“Names?” 

What? How had Shuuichi not thought they would ask for nam—

Before Shuuichi could continue his thought, Kokichi rattled off two fake, but legitimate-sounding names, making the clerk nod his head as he typed it into the computer. 

Finally, the damned clicking stopped, and with a yawn, the man held out his hand. “Eighty, please.” 

Kokichi, reluctantly, let go of Shuuichi’s hand when he pulled it away to grab the money from his bag. Handing it to the clerk, the teen nodded and produced a pair of room card keys from under the desk. “There’s your room keys. If you need anything else, let me know. I guess. Otherwise, have a great night.” With that, he dragged his tired body back to wherever he had been taking his nap, probably going to resume it the minute he got there.

They exited the check-in area and Kokichi looked at their keys. “Come on, let’s go.” 

Shuuichi, for once at least, knew where they were going, having glanced at the cards prior to Kokich looking at them. He watched Kokichi carefully as they readied their ascent to the second floor, making sure he wouldn’t fall back and tumble down the stairs or bring Shuuichi down with him in his tumble. 

They reached the room, which wasn’t too far from the staircase, and Kokichi slid the card into the slot opening it up. A waft of the air from the room caught his nose and Shuuichi winced. They had been spending too long outside smelling only natural things and the stale air offended his nose. Kokichi too looked as if he too was having a problem with the smell. Or maybe it was just how the room presented itself as clean and organized. Shuuichi had found out a long time ago Kokichi tended to have a problem with just about everything. 

Regardless, they stepped into the room, turning on the light and shutting the door before any bugs could come in for a free stay overnight. Shuuichi had to admit, it looked nice, and even had separate beds for the both of them. 

Kokichi threw his bag off of his back, and Shuuichi followed, seeing if he would react when he threw it right over Kokichi’s. When nothing happened except Kokichi throwing himself onto the closest bed in relief, Shuuichi sighed. 

“Go take a shower, you stink,” Kokichi told him, talking into the pillow. 

“And you don’t?” 

“I’ll take one after you or something,” Kokichi said, giving a non-committal answer. 

Shuuichi went over to the bag he had just thrown onto the ground and pulled out his last pair of clean spare clothes. He went into the bathroom, turned the water in the shower on, and stripped, waiting for the water to turn warm before finally stepping in. He put his head against the wall, relaxing as the water cascaded down his back, closing his eyes and letting himself soak in the calming heat from the shower. 

He also thought. Thought long and hard about everything and where it was all leading. Was it possible that Kokichi was right? That Shuuichi just needed to be a bit more optimistic about everything? Maybe. He brushed away the thought by straightening up his back and grabbing the shampoo the motel had provided, banishing any thoughts of tomorrow until he was done with his shower. It would be such a waste if he couldn’t even enjoy this. 

* * *

When he finally came out of the bathroom, a bit disgruntled with the way the clothes were sticking to him so tightly, he found Kokichi sitting upright on the bed, a pillow under his ankle with an ice pack on it, lazily holding the T.V. remote in his hands as he watched some kids morning show, happily munching on a snack and getting crumbs everywhere.

“Where did you get the ice from?” 

“Downstairs,” Kokichi admitted without faltering, too enraptured in watching the low budget children’s show. “They had an ice machine down there so I went and grabbed some super quick while you took your overly long shower. You probably didn’t even leave any hot water for me, did you?”  

“Why would you go downstairs?” Shuuichi asked with fright. “Are you okay?” 

“Well duh, of course I am. If I wasn’t, then I wouldn’t be here.” 

Shuuichi guessed he had a point. If anything  _ had  _ happened to Kokichi, he probably wouldn’t be sitting in front of Shuuichi right now. 

“Is your ankle at least feeling better? You didn’t fall or anything?” 

Kokichi waved him off. “Nope! Well, at least no to falling. Like I said, there wasn’t really anything wrong with it so of course it’s feeling better! Shuuichi you’re just a worry wart.”

“Which is why you’re icing it and treating it as if it was actually hurting you,” Shuuichi pointed out plainly. 

“All to play the part!” Kokichi bragged, taking the makeshift ice pack off of his ankle and putting it to the side, paying no mind to the way that the bag slowly started to make a spot of water around it. 

“Right, Mr. Actor, now go and take a shower if you’re feeling up to it.” 

Kokichi stepped off of the bed gently, walking over to the bathroom to take a shower of his own. 

Once Kokichi had shut the door and Shuuichi heard the water running, he let his curiosity get the best of him and drifted over to the bag that lay forgotten on the ground, still where Kokichi had first thrown it. With a cautionary glance, he sat down and opened up the backpack, pulling out the notebook that Kokichi had placed in there. 

What he expected to find in there, he did not know, but he did not expect page after page to be filled with love letters. The love letters were only broken up every few pages by a journal entry, that somehow always came back to Shuuichi anyway. 

**I didn’t want to see My Love die.**

Shuuichi paused. Was he talking about love as an abstract concept or as in a person? As in Shuuichi. It didn’t go over Shuuichi’s head anymore that Kokichi had feelings for him. Shuuichi had to admit he felt the same way. But with his feelings came a burning confusion. Shuuichi hated the wave after wave of heavy emotions he first felt in his thumping chest, then down to his stomach out to all of his body. He was losing control of his feelings and he could not stop it.  

He placed the notebook back where it came from once he didn’t find anything else, even after skimming through it the third time. He arranged it to look as neat as possible, trying to ensure Kokichi remained oblivious to the spying effort. 

Soon enough, the sound of running water ended and Shuuichi climbed into his own bed after retrieving the remote from Kokichi’s bed. 

Kokichi nervously poked his head out of the bathroom door, preparing for someone other Shuuichi to be there, staring at him, ready to take them in. When Shuuichi truly was the only person in the room, he stepped out. He had undone the bandages, clearly, and Shuuichi felt like an idiot for not having new ones ready by the time that Kokichi got done with his shower. 

Other then that, Kokichi looked fine, despite the fact that he was wearing dirty clothes.

“What was the point of you taking a shower if you’re just going to put back on the same clothes?” Shuuichi questioned. 

“Meh, never thought of it that way. Plus, I don’t have any clean clothes, so it doesn’t matter anyway. None of your clothes fit me, so that was that for places I could turn to for clean, free clothes, so what was I supposed to do?”

Shuuichi pulled himself away from the relief of his bed. “I’ll bandage your ankle again if you sit still,” he told Kokichi, who nodded in return. 

Kokichi hummed a tune while Shuuichi wrapped up his ankle again, pulling it away when he was done and immediately placing it on top of the pillow again and putting the ice back on it.

When Shuuichi was done, he packed all of his supplies back up before heading over to his own bed and sliding under the blankets, melting at the feeling of being the perfectly warm temperature instead of too hot or too cold.  

It didn’t take long for the T.V. to be turned off and the light soon after that. Kokichi stayed sitting up. 

“Got to sleep, Kokichi,” Shuuichi tried to get out as clear as possible with his tired voice, but it probably ended up sounding like gibberish. 

Kokichi hummed, but did not do anything to move from his spot. 

Shuuichi let him be, knowing there was nothing that could change Kokichi’s mind about that, and finally fell asleep. 

* * *

“Psst, hey, Shuuichi, move over.”

Shuuichi did nothing but curl up a little, his body being too sore to do anything else except basic movements.   

“Shuuichi,” he tried again. On about the fourth time, he got tired and fed up finally and moved Shuuichi on his own, causing Shuuichi to gain back some consciousness at the feeling of the movement. 

“Huh? What are you doing?” 

Kokichi said nothing, just rolling onto the spot that he had moved Shuuichi from, setting up his leg the same way. “Go back to sleep.” 

“Well, whatever your reason is, I’m glad you’re sitting next to me,” Shuuichi said despite the fact that Kokichi refused to tell him his reason. 

“...Do you really think that way?” 

“Yeah.” 

A moment of silence. 

“I love you, Shuuichi.” 

Shuuichi swallowed. “I love you too. I’m sorry I got so panicked over you sometimes. I was just worried.”  

“That’s okay, it’s nice to have someone concerned like that.”

Shuuichi wished they’d kept the T.V. on just a bit to get rid of the awkward silence. 

Finally, Kokichi opened up his hand and held it open for Shuuichi to put his own in. Without a second thought, Shuuichi did it, and without a second thought, he gently squeezed Kokichi’s hand, smiling when he squeezed back. 

“I love you, Kokichi,” he repeated, yawning and growing drowsy.

“I love you too, Shuuichi.” 

If Shuuichi heard him or had fallen into some blissful dream, he had no idea. 

He stared at the wall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it!


	4. But even so,

“Psst, hey, Shuuichi, wake up,” he heard a voice say close to his ear, the soft whisper almost inaudible.  

Shuuichi groaned and a hand slapped over his mouth and Shuuichi forced himself not to panic in his still sleepy state, knowing it was Kokichi who had done it. 

“Shh, try not to say anything. Listen.” 

Shuuichi kept his eyes closed, trying to find out what Kokichi was trying to get him to hear. Within seconds he heard it, the faint voices that became clearer to him by the second. Shuuichi’s breathing picked up and his eyes opened, looking straight into the eyes of Kokichi who was staring down at Shuuichi and biting his lip. 

“Calm down. Quietly and slowly, roll off the bed and onto the floor.” 

Shuuichi nodded his head against Kokichi’s hand.

Just as Kokichi had asked of him, he slowly managed to lower himself to the ground and Kokichi followed directly after, reaching above him to try to smooth the blankets out as best as he could. Once he was done though, he laid back down on the ground next to Shuuichi, who was looking at him with wide eyes. 

Soon enough, a light shined through the room, hitting the wall above where the bed was. The light moved around the room, shining on various places and lingering on some for a short period of time before it snapped to another position. Shuuichi took a shaky intake of breath, but Kokichi didn’t even turn his head to look at him, keeping his entire being more focused on what was happening outside their room. 

“Sure they came to this place?” Shuuichi heard a gruff voice ask, annoyance hinting its way into the man’s voice. 

“Well that’s what the report said at least,” another voice answered.   

“We should just break the fuck in,” a new voice chimed in. How many of them were there out there? 

“Oh yeah? I’m glad you’re so fucking confident. Here’s the thing you fucking idiot. Unless we know for sure they’re in there, we get sued and arrested for breaking and entering into a fucking motel where someone  _ else  _ is in the room. If it were up to me, we’d’ve smashed down every damn door by now, but that’s not how things always work,” the first gruff man said. “Damn lucky you even got me to come here like this, this is bullshit. Ain’t no one hiding here. They’d be fools.” Shuuichi heard the man start to walk away, the pounding of his footsteps getting further and further away, shaking the floor less and less. 

“And that’s what they want you to think!” Another one of the voices shrieked. “They  _ want  _ you to think they’d think it too stupid to come here, so they  _ would  _ come here. It’s reverse psychology, I’m telling you! My source was very clear with what he said he saw!” 

“Well your source is a loon, just like you! You’re all so fucking paranoid about trying to find those damn Ultimates that every little odd thing you see someone do must mean they’re those fucking Ultimates. I say enough! Let’s pack up and go fucking home. They’re not here and we’re wasting our damn time and risking being arrested for snooping like this.” 

“No, they  _ must  _ be here!” 

“Well I got news for you. If they  _ were  _ here, they ain’t no more! Gone, adios, sayonara. How many languages do I gotta tell this to you in before you fucking snap out of this funk you’ve gotten yourself into and head home.” 

“I need that damn money you don’t even understand man.” 

“We’d all like the money, but it’s not worth losing even more over if you guess wrong.” 

“It’s not a guess!” 

“Sure, and you know that by look at a door?” 

“We’ll get officers down here! I need that money! I ain’t leavin’ til those two are dead and I got me that money!” 

Suddenly, Shuuichi heard a pound on the door and almost yelped. Tears built up in his eyes. 

“EY, you two! Get the fuck out here and we’ll make it quick and gentle! Won’t even feel it, my promise.” As if it was somehow going to prove his point about being “gentle” the man slammed his fist on the door a few more times. 

Shuuichi started to shake, letting tears openly fall from his eyes. Kokichi had been right, this was a horrible idea, and now they were going to die with no way out of this hell hole. Except… he didn’t want to die, not yet, not like this at least, like some  animal next in line to be slaughtered. He always lived on borrowed time, it was true. The attitude was always “when they kill me,” not “if they will kill me.” What had changed it? What had made him finally want to live again, if only for a bit longer? 

A door slammed open and Shuuichi froze, trying to hold back the hiccups. It took him a minute though to recognize that the man hadn’t broken down their door, but rather someone, their next door neighbor, had slammed theirs open. 

“You’re going to call the officers, huh? Well I’m gonna call the police on you if you don’t cut it the fuck out and go back to wherever you came from. Shoo! It’s the middle of the damn night. Ever heard of common damn courtesy?”

“You don’t understand, my good friend,” the other replied, trying to be as polite as possible. “There be—”

“I damn well heard what there “be” here. And with that in mind I’m telling you to shoo and do it now before I call the cops, and I know you fellas don’t want no trouble with the cops, don’t want a ticket or nothing.” 

“Damn Ultimates got my great-grandparents killed by starting that damn Tragedy. But, my friend, if there are them Ultimates here, then—”

“Those damn Ultimates never did a damn thing to me, but meanwhile I can’t say the same thing about you fellas. Ain’t no reason to fucking be doing this to them, if they are here that is, if they ain’t causin’ no trouble. Ain’t been no trouble here  _ yet _ and I sure as hell don’t want to see fucking blood over everything just because you wanted to kill some people who did nothing wrong. Not even disturbing the peace or anything, yet here you are saying that they’re causing problems and then going and causing them yourself. Now go!” 

If the man who had come looking for them had anything more to say, he apparently knew enough to hold his tongue in this situation. “Alright, c’mon, let's go. Guess you were right, we should've packed up and left.” 

“That's what I was saying. Now let's go home I got work to do tomorrow and I don't need to be more tired then I need to be,” Shuuichi heard the man from earlier say and after a few minutes, Shuuichi could hear their feet pounding down the stairs and the sound of a car starting and driving away. 

Their neighbor hadn't shut his door yet though, so Shuuichi had no choice but to keep holding his breath. Finally, a gentle knock was heard on their door and Shuuichi almost pulled his hair out from the tension of not knowing what was going to happen. He hated this. Normally he'd be able to have some idea, but everything was stressful and terrifying, especially because it was his own neck in the line of fire. 

“Hey, um, if you're in there that is, they're gone now.” 

Shuuichi and Kokichi stayed silent. 

“Do you need anything? I haven't been paying much attention, but I know a bit of the situation. I mean, not that different than any other situation like this,” the man gave a small laugh at his own joke. “Anyway,” he said, growing serious again, “um, I don't know what else to say. I've been here on this earth for quite some time now, but I damn well hope you're the first ones to, er, us your gifts for something good. A change for the better.” 

There was silence and then a sigh from the man. “Well, if you’re not gonna come out, not that I blame you, I’m gonna head back to bed. May you be safe in your journey, wherever that may be or lead you to.” With those last words, they heard the door next to their room shut again. Despite that, they both laid motionless on the floor for a bit longer, Shuuichi taking in gulps of air while Kokichi played with something in his hands for a bit, a shine coming off of it. 

“Is that a knife?” 

Kokichi hummed and sheathed the blade, placing it in the pocket of his pants. Oh, so that was where he had been keeping it, which also explained why Shuuichi couldn’t find it in his bag. 

“You weren’t seriously going to kill them, were you?” 

“If I killed them, that would just prove we were evil Ultimates, like everyone expects. It would just perpetuate the “Tragedy” cliche.”

Shuuichi laid his head down on his folded up arms, using it to comfortably keep his head up while he stared at the wall. 

Crickets chirped outside their room. 

“We definitely have to leave now,” Kokichi said, finally gathering the courage to stand up. 

“Where are we going to go though. Wouldn't it be safer just to stay here?” 

“We can't stay here forever. Plus, whoever that angry guy was will definitely call the officers. We can't wait for them to show up.” 

Kokichi put his hand out, helping Shuuichi off of the ground. 

“...I’m sorry.” 

“Huh? What do you have to be sorry about?” 

“I wanted us to come here.” 

“Oh, Shuuichi,” Kokichi sighed. “I think you forget that I agreed to this too.” 

“But I was the one who wanted to go in the first place!” 

“Were you? Did you offer to run away? I’m pretty sure you were fully prepared to die had I not said anything to you that day.”

Shuuichi said nothing back instead choosing to walk over and grab his backpack. He threw Kokichi’s at him and he caught it with ease. 

“Kind of light, don’t you think?” Shuuichi asked Kokichi. 

“You just noticed?” Kokichi asked him with mocking suspicion. “I think you knew, but chose not to say anything. In fact, I think you went into this, didn’t you? There’s no shame in hiding it now.” 

Shuuichi hung his head down. “Yes.” 

“Oh, it’s okay, my beloved,” Kokichi claimed, but when Shuuichi looked up into his eyes he could see a glimmer of betrayal in Kokichi’s eyes that quickly faded, gone as quickly as it had come. 

“It’s not,” Shuuichi said after a second, refusing to ignore the look that had been in Kokichi’s eyes. 

“Well, if you hadn’t looked in the backpack, would you have found out my love for you? Would you have admitted that we love each other? Would you have realized your own feelings if you didn’t have to stare back down at words on a page saying how much I love you? See? There’s a silver lining to everything!” 

“I suppose.” 

Seeing Shuuichi still sluking, Kokichi sighed and walked up to him and gave him a small push. 

“Huh?” Shuuichi made a noise of confusion, looking down at Kokichi. “What was that for?” 

“You’re being stupid again.” 

“‘Stupid?’” Shuuichi asked. 

“Do you wish that that never happened? That maybe we never would have known?” 

“No. I wouldn’t redo a single moment of that part.” 

“Then what’s the problem?” 

“I guess nothing…” Shuuichi admitted. 

“It’s fine if you can’t see it the same way. It’s fine if you can never see it the same way as me! But what I don’t want you to do is regret it as a whole.” 

“I  won’t. Not as a whole anyway.” 

“Good.” 

“But, Kokichi, what about your ankle? We can’t go that far can we?” Shuuichi asked with concern. 

“Oh, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Doesn’t hurt as much and it’s okay to walk on. It got probably just a little twisted, that was all.” 

“I wish you wouldn’t chose to ignore the pain like this.” 

“What are you supposed to do, carry me? Stick me in your backpack like one of those designer small dogs you always see in the pocketbook of one of those dressed up snobby women in the mall?” 

“You’d be a bit too heavy for that anyway, I think,” Shuuichi joked, soft, wry smile brightening his face. “You’d probably end up causing more damage to my back then you would to your ankle by not getting any support in there.” 

“Hey, but at least then I’d be able to eat all the snacks I wanted,” Kokichi joked back. 

“Thank you for giving me another reason why I shouldn’t let you do that.” 

“Oh, come on, I’d only eat about half of the food, nothing more.” 

Shuuichi sighed. “As much as I’d love to keep doing this, what are we supposed to do at this point? I suggest we get as far as we possibly can from here and lay low for a long time.” 

“A long time? How long is ‘a long time?’ Because to me, that means half, if not the rest of, our lives,” Kokichi responded.

“We really can’t even do that, can we?” Shuuichi gave in. “Look at us, we can’t even go anywhere without people chasing us down.” 

“How did they even find us? Do you think it’s true he just got word from someone here?”

Shuuichi hummed. “Sure, that could have happened, but it wouldn’t be that hard really to track us down regardless,” he admitted. “Amatur detectives and real detectives do missing peoples cases all the time. My uncle and I even did some occasionally.” 

“That would have been nice information to know,” Kokichi said, a hint of bitter in his voice. 

“Sorry, didn’t think it would matter.”

“If you predicted random people would try to track us down then—of course it matters!” But then Kokichi shook his head. “As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right, it really doesn’t matter.” Kokichi’s face grew downtrodden for a second before a small smile graced his face again. “Well regardless, we have a few problems then. What is the chance that someone actually does manage to track us down?” 

“Not too high. Despite the news essentially blasting us everywhere, we have stayed relatively low profile. The only chasable leads are that one store you stole from and this motel,” Shuuichi told Kokichi, who listened raptly to how they could have been exposed. “Of course now we have someone who is going to call the officers and make things way worse, but hey, we’ve done pretty good thus far besides from that.” 

“A little bit optimistic, huh?” 

“Well you’ve been the one saying we could live all this time, right? So isn’t that pretty good news to hear?”

Kokichi gave nothing away to what he was feeling when Shuuichi said that, remaining motionless when he spoke to Kokichi. 

“Sometimes, I wish I kept my phone, just so I could see and keep up with the news a bit better,” Shuuichi said. “Maybe have a better idea of roads and news and stuff.” 

“And let them follow us?” 

“Well that’s why I didn’t do it.”  

Kokichi hesitantly peered through the window. “It all looks clear, so if you’re ready to go, we should.” 

Shuuichi nodded. “Yeah,  _ I’m _ good. You sure  _ you’re _ going to be though?” 

Kokichi gave him a smile. “Yeah! Definitely!” 

“As long as you say so…” 

Kokichi slowly opened the door, checking to make sure that the coast actually was clear before motioning for Shuuichi to follow. 

They moved in silence, walking down the stairs carefully, Shuuichi’s heart stuck in his throat with every noise that was made. 

Once they had made it a considerable distance away from the motel, Shuuichi finally let himself relax a bit, but not without looking over his shoulder every once in awhile to make sure no one had been following them.

“So we should keep going the direction we were going,” Kokichi told Shuuichi with confidence. 

“Do you even know the direction we were going?” Shuuichi asked. 

“Of course!” 

“Then what way was it?” 

“Shuuichi! Haven’t you learned anything by now? Someone could be listening to us right now.” 

Shuuichi looked around, trying to see if that was some sort of code word. 

“I’m just kidding ya know, there’s nothing here, or at least from what I can tell.” 

“O-Oh,” Shuuichi said, stumbling a bit at the revelation. “How are you holding up?” He asked with concern. 

“Fine! Like I told you, nothing big! I can keep going for days!” 

“Only if you’re sure,” Shuuichi said, hesitantly.

“Oh, but you know what would make my life so much better?” 

“What?” Shuuichi asked, but a smile played on his lips. 

“If you held my hand.” 

Shuuichi laughed and grabbed Kokichi’s hand as they journeyed side by side, into the near future, unaware, or perhaps willing ignorant, of the start of the end.  

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhh, I'm sorry if you saw this notification for the chapter upload last night and then it wasn't there anymore, or if you're getting it again after I reupload this, ao3 machine was br0ke last night and didn't push any updates onto the page, so it didn't show as updated, so I took it down and wanted to republish this chapter once ao3 stopped being so weird lol 
> 
> Also, a quick note, I will not be updating anything until around 6/2 due to college scholarship things I need to apply to, end of school year projects, and general lack of time. However, if I upload anything, it will be my saiouma exchange once those come out and I get my prompt, so don't think I'm not updating either fic anymore, I just need a quick minute to get some shit done, I'm very sorry! 
> 
> Besides from that, hope you enjoyed the chapter!


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